Watson tried from another angle.

“Just who do you think I am, sir?”

The other smiled as before.  “It is not what I may think,” he replied:  “but what I know.  You are the proof that was promised us by the great Rhamda Avec.  You are—­the fact and the substance!”

He waited for Watson’s answer.  Stupefaction delayed it.  After a moment the Rhamda continued: 

“Is it not so?  Am I not right?  You are surely out of the occult, my dear sir.  You are a spirit!”

It took Chick wholly by surprise.  He had been ready to deal with anything—­but this.  It was unreal, weird, impossible.  And yet, why not?  The professor had set out to remove forever the screen that had hitherto shrouded the shadow:  but what had he revealed?  What had the Spot disclosed?  Unreality or reality?  Which is which?

In the inspiration of the moment, Chick saw that he had reached the crossroads of the occult.  There was no time to think; there was time only for a plunge.  And, like all strong men, Watson chose the deeper water.

He turned to the Rhamda Geos.

“Yes,” said he quietly.  “I—­am a spirit.”

XXXI

UP FOR BREATH

Rhamda Geos, instead of showing the concern and uneasiness that most men would show in the presence of an avowed ghost, evinced nothing but a deep and reverent happiness.  He took Watson’s hand almost shyly.  And while his manner was not effusive, it had the warmth that comes from the heart of a scholar.

“As a Rhamda,” he declared, “I must commend myself for being the first to speak to you.  And I must congratulate you, my dear sir, on having fallen, not into the hands of Bar Senestro, but into those of my own kind.  It is a proof of the prophecy, and a vindication of the wisdom of the Ten Thousand.

“I bid you welcome to the Thomahlia, and I offer you my services, as guide and sponsor.”

Chick did not reply at once.  The chance he had taken was one of those rare decisions that come to genius; the whole balance of his fate might swing upon his sudden impulse.  Not that he had any compunction; but he felt that it tied him down.  It restricted him.  Certainly almost any role would be easier than that of a spirit.

He didn’t feel like a ghost.  He wondered just how a ghost would act, anyhow.  What was more, he could not understand such a queer assumption on the Rhamda’s part.  Why had he seemed to want Chick a ghost?  Watson was natural, human, embodied, just like the Rhamda.  This was scarcely his idea of a phantom’s life.  Most certainly, the two of them were men, nothing else; if one was a wraith, so was the other.  But—­how to account for it?

Again he thought of Rhamda Avec.  The words of Geos, “The Fact and the Substance,” had been exactly synonymous with what had been said of Avec by Dr. Holcomb, “The proof of the occult.”